Transcendent

tran  .  scend  .  ent/adjective/ exceeding usual limits, surpassing, extending, or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience, moving beyond physical needs and realities

Our word for this week is one we often encounter in religious literature, referencing faith and existentially spiritual experiences. Some may think of it as meaning “otherworldly,” while for others, transcendental meditation immediately rushes into the mind. However, the word can apply very well to practical areas of life, as an article in the October 2016 Chronicle of Education shows. Professors John Kaag and Clancy Martin approach the topic within a broader context. In their article “Can Transcendence Be Taught?” they ask, “Are we teaching (our students) everything without teaching them anything regarding the big questions that matter most? Is there a curriculum that addresses why we are here?” The question is relevant not only to what students are taught but also to what the rest of us who are not students believe and how we live as a result of our belief.

The origin of a word is often useful to help us frame a better understanding of its meaning. Transcendence is from the Latin “trans,” meaning “beyond,” and   “scandare,” which means “to climb.”  In transcendence, you  climb beyond ordinary limits, that is, beyond the way society or the culture usually dictates that we see things.  This thought is useful to us in understanding that our God-created  mental faculties can take us far. Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book/to take us lands away.”  Books, as she says here, can transport us across geographical boundaries. One of the definitions of transcendence is that it deals with matters “lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience.” Earth-bound as we are, we often depend on what we can experience through our senses, but there is more to life than sensation. The mind can lift us past our present surroundings and help us transcend many an unsavory circumstance.

In this regard, we can think of Richard Lovelace, a 17th century poet who was imprisoned for political reasons. In his poem “To Althea, from Prison,”  we find the well-known lines: “Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage/Minds innocent and quiet/Take that for a hermitage.”  The poet goes on to say that he was free as long as his mind was free. This is not escapism, but an understanding of the power of the mind to take us beyond immediate hard circumstances.  Another poet who saw things in a similar  light to that of Lovelace is  Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19th century Welsh writer.  In “The  Caged Skylark,” Hopkins wrote,  “As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage/Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house dwells.” For Hopkins, the spirit of man is housed in a body–a bone-house–but he has  a “mounting spirit,” a transcendent spirit, meant to soar. Like the skylark, it was meant to mount upward above life’s vicissitudes. The authors of  the Chronicle article suggest  that a clear knowledge of transcendence can help students understand and deal with concerns about life’s meaning, matters which reach far beyond a particular major or completing course work to get a job that pays well.

Transcendent thinking is valuable to counteract the mundane, daily bubble of alarms that threaten to suck us in and  tend to keep us focused on the here and now only. True, we can’t ignore the fact that we are in the world; we shouldn’t forget our responsibility to serve  others, to be aware of their  pain. We live in a world where hardships occur, and other people’s hardships do matter. But we can teach ourselves to live in the world, yet be “not of the world,” as our Lord said (John 15:19). We can let our spirit live above it.

As we get ready to celebrate  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we can think of Dr. King as one who was keenly aware of the problems of Black Americans–indeed, of all Americans–and was an advocate for them in word and action. He saw the problems, the injustices plain and stark, but his transcendent vision moved him to see possibilities. Words prominent in his vocabulary were “dream,”  “hope,”  and “faith.” With them he was able to transcend his then present realities to look to a brighter future. He said:

“I have a dream that one day, every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain laid low.
The rough will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is  our hope, this is
our faith.”

Dr. King had learned transcendence early from the Word of God, so that on a memorable August day in 1963 before a massive audience at the Lincoln Memorial, he  could present a transcendent view from Scripture  (Isaiah 40:4, 5)  of a better time to come, despite the present realities of physical hardships and abuse, class distinctions, racial injustice,  prejudice, and economic limitations. Can transcendence be taught?  Dr. King demonstrated that it can be. On that momentous day, many learned from his powerful words and went away caught up in  his vision to transcend the barriers and work toward that better tomorrow. Progress is possible when we apply hope and faith to live with transcendence.

Blessings,

Judith

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“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? Learn how to read a poem.”
Professor Joseph Campbell